Kerry: Iran doesn't have to account for past nuclear weapons research

Secretary of State John Kerry made a surprise appearance at the State Department’s daily press briefing on Tuesday, though not exactly in person.

The 71-year-old diplomat, who suffered a broken leg two weeks ago, appeared on a television screen remotely from Boston. He introduced the department’s new spokesman, John Kirby, on what was Kirby’s first day at the podium, but Kerry also tackled questions from reporters about the Iran nuclear talks, Syria and other hot issues.

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Kerry suggested that Iran would not have to fully account for any past atomic weapons research as part of reaching a nuclear deal, affirming earlier reports that the U.S. wouldn’t make that a condition.

The U.S. has for years pressed Iran to come clean about the “possible military dimensions” of its nuclear program, while Iran insists the program is entirely peaceful.

“The possible military dimensions, frankly, gets distorted a little bit in some of the discussion, in that we’re not fixated on Iran specifically accounting for what they did at one point in time or another,” Kerry said. “We know what they did. We have no doubt. We have absolute knowledge with respect to the certain military activities they were engaged in. What we’re concerned about is going forward. It’s critical to us to know that going forward, those activities have been stopped, and that we can account for that in a legitimate way.”

Kerry said the talks, which have a deadline of June 30, “remain tough,” but insisted the United States had not changed its position “one iota” in recent months.

While the preliminary deal reached in early April defined “fundamental parameters,” he added, there is “leeway to be able to further define certain things.”

On Syria, Kerry said the U.S. is certain that the “vast preponderance” of chlorine gas chemical attacks reporting in the conflict there are being carried out by the government of President Bashar Assad.

“That is not to say that some element of an opposition may not have had access at one point in time or another and have actually utilized something at one point in time or another. But when I talk about the vast preponderance, I mean vast preponderance,” he said. “It has been significantly documented. It’s dropped from airplanes. There are only – the opposition isn’t flying airplanes or helicopters.”

Kerry said he’s raised the issue with Russia’s foreign minister and that he’s confident the Russians, who are close to Assad, will bring it up with the Arab leader. The secretary also said he was concerned about reports that Russian President Vladimir Putin intended to grow his country’s nuclear arsenal by adding 40 intercontinental ballistic missiles, though he also acknowledged Moscow could be posturing in response to military moves by NATO.

“We’ve had enormous cooperation from the 1990s forward with respect to the destruction of nuclear weapons that were in former territories of the Soviet Union, and nobody wants to see us step backward,” Kerry said. “Nobody wants to, I think, go back to a kind of Cold War status.”

Kerry broke his right femur in a bicycling accident in France and had surgery at a Boston hospital. He was due to fly to Washington later Tuesday.

In the briefing, Kerry did not commit to enforcing the June 30 deadline, saying only that he would attend “what one hopes would be the closeout and should be the closeout of the negotiations with respect to the Iran nuclear program.”